Randy Hetrick Interview

The Man Behind TRX Shares His 10 Favorite TRX Moves

Randy Hetrick is the inventive man behind the ever-so-popular TRX. TRX was born out of a desire to help Navy SEALs who were on deployment, and now almost everyone in the fitness realm is familiar with the black and yellow bands. From elite athletes to basic beginners, TRX is now strapped into millions of different gyms and homes worldwide.

Hetrick is currently working as a judge on Spike’s entrepreneur show Sweat Inc., which sets out to find America’s next big fitness phenomenon (Tuesdays at 11pm EST/10 Central). In between episodes, we caught up with the TRX creator to find out his 10 personal favorite moves with the straps:

Power Pull

Filed in the oldies but goodies category is the power pull. It seems like you’re working your arms, shoulders and back, but what gets tied into it — as a lot of TRX moves do — is the core. “It’s a great, totally-functional, fully-integrated single arm row with a rotation,” explains Hetrick. “It’s the first exercise I ever programmed on the very first Cro-Magnon version of the suspension trainer.”

Overhead Squat

We think of overhead squats as the classic Olympic weightlifting move but TRX has its own version. And it’s actually a great way for beginners to ease into overhead squats, which are an advanced move. “It’s not quite as well-known as some of the other movements that TRX has become more famous for but overhead squats are one of the great movements with the straps,” says Hetrick. “With slight activation on the straps, you’re firing up the entire backside of your body and then you do a nice, solid squat clean pattern. That gentle activation with the back of the hands fires up the whole posterior chain, so you’re actually doing squats into extension, which will help you with your Olympic lifting and anything you want to do. This is a great, scalable way to get into overhead squats without having the heavy load.”

Squat Row

“I love the squat row as a warm-up. It’s probably my go-to posterior warm-up in my three warm-up exercises that I do religiously,” explains Hetrick. “One is for the posterior side, the other is for the anterior side and then I do rotation. The squat row is amazing and there’s all kinds of variations to it. I’ll get on it and do about 30 seconds to a minute to warm up the backside of my body.”

Clock Press

“In this move, one arm is executing a press and one arm is executing a fly, and then you alternate sides. It’s a great way to tie things together at the shoulder joint that you rarely see people do,” says Hetrick. Consider this move the TRX version of patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. “Yes, the clock press and even the clock row — where one arm is rowing and one arm is flying — is an even better example of that.”

TRX Crunch

“I love the basic TRX crunch: toes in, knees to chest, in and out,” says Hetrick. Seems basic enough but if you’ve ever done the move, you quickly realize it’s not just a crunch. Your abs get no break because your feet are suspended and you’re constantly in a plank. “You get one end of your body suspended and the other end of your body grounded, and you focus on maintaining an active plank. The only way you can do that is by firing all of the internal core musculature — not just the superficial but the external musculature, including the musculature that stabilizes the spine. You end up developing real core strength if you spend any amount of time with your feet in those straps.”

TRX Atomic Pike Crunch

With any of the TRX moves, they become “atomic” if you add a push in between. For example, if you’re doing crunches and you interweave push-ups in your reps, then that becomes an atomic crunch. It’s a scaling level for those of us who are more advanced, so it’s no surprise that an atomic move is among Hetrick’s favorites.

“I love the pike version of the crunch,” says Hetrick. “Then when you add a pushup, it puts you into metabolic hell very quickly and it’s just great bang for your buck. One of the things I like doing most is I’ll do an atomic pike crunch but I’ll fail through my chest and shoulders before I fail through the core, so I will double up on the knee-to-chest. I do one pushup for every two knee tucks and that evens out the savagery between my chest and shoulders, and my core. By the time you’re reaching failure, you’re just coming apart at the seams. Every muscle in the body is quivering and your heart is pounding. 30 seconds of that feels like hell.”

Side Planks

“The side plank series with the suspension trainer — with your feet in the straps — is about as challenging an oblique core stabilization pose as you’re going to find,” says Hetrick. Planking is challenging enough as it is but with your legs in the straps, it demands that much more of your core. And, of course, if you want to take it to the next level, there’s a scaling option for hard mode.

“You can take that up a whole level by keeping your down leg in the straps and then using your top leg to abduct,” explains Hetrick. “That’s the classic starfish yoga pose where you’re on your hand and then the other foot lifts, and you have to fire your glutes while you are doing this hellacious hip lift. With that down leg in the straps, all of the stabilization has to come from the hand, through the shoulder, into the core, down to the leg — and you’ve got to balance on multiple axes at once. It’s one of those that you never master, you just practice, but I love it.”

TRX Hamstring Curl

Sometimes when we’re using our legs — for anything from walking to squatting — we don’t notice which one is stronger or which one is more dominant. With TRX, you can quickly find out which leg needs more work and work on it individually. “The hamstring curl and even the hip press — those are two of my favorite lower body/posterior core moves,” says Hetrick. “I like that you can do these moves bilaterally or unilaterally. It can help you balance out the strength.”

TRX Suspended Lunge

“I really like the whole lunge series. Probably my favorite leg exercise of all — and it’s probably the thing that has gotten us into more elite training rooms in professional sports than anything else — is the TRX lunge,” says Hetrick. With the leg suspended, you’ll quickly find that this is more than just a basic lunge, as you’re using a lot of small muscles to keep your balance. “That is a really pure integration of strength, balance and mobility. And one of my very favorite moves is to do this with a kettlebell extended over my head.”

TRX Burpee

Nobody likes burpees. They seem so simple but when you start linking them together, you realize just how much they take out of you. If you think those are hard, try out one of Randy’s favorites: the TRX burpee. “Talk about a metabolic explosion,” says Hetrick. “A minute of those things is the equivalent of most people’s 30-minute workout. That’s one of the moves that’s really gotten to be famous because of how challenging it is. It starts with the lunge and you go down through a burpee, and it seems simple but by the end of it, you realize there’s multiple movements involved.”